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The Cruelty of Supply Chains

“The electronics industry is really a chemical-waste-handling industry,” says Ted Smith, founder of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, in Sue William’s documentary Death by Design. The processes involved in etching printed circuit boards (PCBs) – manufacturing individual components, soldering them into place – for even the most mundane of electronic products, require a multitude of acids, solvents and metals. These must be handled and disposed of with care for the sake of the people manning the production lines as well as the wider environment.